Coffee

Expresso for one

Dinner with friends, old and new

Delicious food. Started with a salad of pancetta and duck egg

Followed by roast beef, sweet potato mash and beans

Finished with figs, creme fraiche and Socotran honey

Saturday Barbecue

Roasted peppers and beefburgers

Eaten outside in the sunshine

Followed by an ice cream sundae

It's not all fancy food

Fish finger sandwich

Soupe a L'Oignon Gratinee

French onion soup, making good use of the leftover wine from Friday's wine tasting

Prosciutto

Prosciutto with buffalo mozzarella, garlic sourdough and tomatoes

Fish for sunday lunch

Fresh, line caught wild seabass

Served with dauphinoise potatoes and broccoli

Welsh rarebit

A mustardy welsh rarebit, outside on a hot Saturday

Wine tasting

Wine aplenty

With tasty cheeses

And lots of bottles

A fun evening, with a popular Moroccan Syrah the surprise of the evening

Steak sandwich for three

Ciabatta, sliced and spread with a generous portion of bearnaise

Topped with seared, seasoned, rested, sliced minute steak

And onions and olive oil

Sunday lunch

A tasty if unoriginal plate of blinis with onuga and smoked salmon to start

Roast chicken

With roast potatoes

And all the trimmings

Saturday dinner

Started with a puy lentil and feta salad with a mint and yoghut dressing

Main course was monkfish roasted with parma ham

Served with crushed new potatoes and spinach

Followed by a fig and Monbazillac ice cream

Amazing steak

To Maze Grill for stunning steaks. Started with being shown the steaks. We admired the Wagyu (bottom right), but at over £100 a teak we decided to give it a miss this time

And went for a fillet of Aberdeen Angus, which, like all the steaks, was served on a suitably chunky chopping board

Sides were ordered separately, and between us we chose some frites, a potato gratin, a gratin of spinach and gruyere, a tomato and onion salad and some field mushrooms

The sauces deserve particular mention. A bordelaise sauce was intense and meaty, and came with little crispy deep fried bits of bone marrow, while the bearnaise was superb

My steak was rare, but with a good crust

Fresh food

Sprouting rocket from the garden, with olive oil, balsamic and a little parmesan

Mushroom risotto

Finely diced red onion

Mxed mushrooms, including some great girolles

Cooked with the usual for a tasty River Cafe risotto